


Voyeurism's more fun (when it isn't just for one)

by bobaheadshark



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blow Jobs, Choking...with cock, Coffee shop AU if you look closely, Cunnilingus, Dildos, Dirty Talk, Eventual meet-cute, Exhibitionism, F/M, Fantasised gangbang, Gratuitous Smut, Look this started as a Kinktober prompt and now it's kinkuary ok, Male Bondage, Mild Praise Kink, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Porn with some plot, Sex Toys, Sexual Fantasy, Strip Tease, There is just a lot going on and most of it is fantasised on Rey's part, consensual voyeurism, mild anal play, mild bondage, mild!sub Ben, sub!Ben tied up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:08:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28937529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobaheadshark/pseuds/bobaheadshark
Summary: The magic trick is Rey setting the pace. Higher and higher up her T-shirt goes, revealing inch after inch of skin. Whatever shred of decorum he’s holding on to is at risk of evaporating — he leans forward to get a better view, and almost slips a little off the sofa in his eagerness.It’s dizzying, having this power.----Rey has a Hot Neighbour. Rey's Hot Neighbour can see her from his house.She decides to do something about it.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 46
Kudos: 341
Collections: Kinkuary Prompt Challenge, Pepsi and Pals' Hardcore Kinktober Challenge





	Voyeurism's more fun (when it isn't just for one)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Persi](https://twitter.com/persimonne666) for the mutual masturbution prompt, [Sadie](https://twitter.com/reylohirrim) for the Kinkuary push. And  
> [kalx58](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalx58) for beta reading! 
> 
> Kinktober '20 prompt fill: Mutual Masturbation  
> Kinkuary '21 prompt fill: Write a kink you haven't before - (consensual voyeurism)
> 
> So yea, lockdown sucks. Here, have some filth.

* * *

Rey doesn’t know who he is. Where he comes from. Doesn’t even know his name. But every Tuesday and Thursday at 8.45pm, she gets in front of her studio apartment window, and spreads her legs. 

There’s little ceremony. She’s ten minutes late today and he’s clearly noticed, sat in his ridiculously large living room, in his usual black jumper and sweats. Tossing the magazine on his coffee table as he smirks at her through two panes of glass. He leans back and spreads his arms on the back of his sofa, as if waiting to see what she’ll do next. 

_Oh, he wants a show?,_ she thinks. _Let’s give him one._

FKA Twigs seems right for the occasion, so Rey hits play on her phone and lets the music work its magic. She drops her rucksack on the floor and rolls her shoulders back, tension of the day ebbing from her limbs. It’s a tall order, getting into the right headspace with the afternoon she’s had. Best summarised as too many funding applications, too much sausage fighting in the research cohort, and diminishing returns on her increasingly finite patience. But who’s she lying to? Her time in front of the window’s one of the highlights of her week. 

A small sigh, and off comes her coat, then her dark jeans. Debris from the day, shipwrecked on her desk chair. In her normal life, she’s a creature of habit, a life constrained by practicality and the inconspicuous. But at her window, she can be whoever she wants to be. 

Just her T-shirt and underwear left. Nothing to write home about: sensible cotton, with just enough lace detail to be on the borderline of cute. But in the corner of her eye, she sees Hot Neighbour squirm a little in his seat like he’s enjoying where this is going.

She takes her time, relishing the tease. She doesn’t need to look to know that in the span of five or so breaths – or as Rey once fondly remembers it, the time he once took to come — Hot Neighbour’s hand has drifted down to the crotch of his jeans, and he’s stroking himself.

She bites her lower lip, aiming for coy, like she’s seen those girls in the videos do. Sometimes, he likes her like that. An artist’s impression of innocence, when she’s usually been the one instigating. 

The magic trick is her setting the pace. Higher and higher up her T-shirt goes, revealing inch after inch of skin. Whatever shred of decorum he’s holding on to is at risk of evaporating — he leans forward to get a better view, and almost slips a little off the sofa in his eagerness.

It’s dizzying, having this power.

Rey smiles, and tilts her chin at him. 

_Your move.  
  
_

———

  
Rey’s place is on the back alley of a corner that looks into a new build, and she happens to have one of the older units on the block that hasn’t gone to the great affordable-real-estate-place-in-the-sky. Which is why she and Hot Neighbour have the relative privacy. Their windows are, Rey reckons, eight feet apart. Close enough that she could daredevil-leap into his place if she really tried, but far enough distanced that it still feels completely illicit. Oddly, she’s never run into Hot Neighbour on the street, because he seems the type to spend most of his time in the office, or zipping to and from airports, in company-expensed Ubers. 

Aside from his elderly cleaner who comes in once a week, she also hasn’t seen him keep any other company. Not that it would matter. Like a fairground that passes through town, she prefers not looking too closely at the details of this situation, enjoying the exhilaration while it lasts. She likes the adrenalin, the thrill of being seen, before reality comes crashing down.

 _Face it, Johnson_ , she tells herself. He’s probably a bloody Tory. Probably a hedge fund dementor who manages money for the 1%, or does something sketchy in the wings of autocratic dictatorships like... a “policy consultant”, or a “special advisor”. 

It’s very hard to remember these moral qualms when they watch each other masturbating two times a week, though.

It’s more fun to look and not touch, anyway. Something about the feeling of watching, and being watched. Something about Rey – whose daily highlights at her bioscience job include moving one microsample from one fridge to the other – instead moving a 6-inch silicone dildo in and out of her cunt, while a stranger observes.

The best part is, he returns the favour. Often. From far enough away that she can’t fully see the angry head of his cock, but she knows the way his hips jerk and how he curls into himself when he comes on his own hand. And she shapes the terms of engagement that get him there.  
  


———

  
Back at the window, Hot Neighbour’s jaw’s gone slack. Rey shakes her head at him from where she sits on the bed, and points to him – “it’s your turn”. His shoulders fill the stretch of his jumper beautifully, so wide it’s almost criminal. And she thinks it’s infuriating, actually, how gentrifiers can dress like that, and still not have a shred of self-consciousness to speak of. 

He tugs his own clothes off, graceful as a panther, knowing she enjoys the view. Rey’s forgotten bra slides down her front, and her breath is in her throat. She touches herself without hesitation, running her palms over her tits and across the inside of her thighs already, going too fast but she can’t help it, because the view is spectacular. He’s all dense muscle and coiled strength, like he could toss her onto her bed and leave a goddamned dent in her wall – the way she imagines he’d destroy her fucking cunt. There’s already a sketch in her mind of what they’d do, and she lets her subconscious fill in the rest. His hands, traversing her body. His mouth, whispering soft in the divot of her spine. Voice, low and seductive in her ear. _Relax_ , he’d say. _You’ve worked so hard today. Smart, capable Rey. Let me treat you right. Fuck you just how you like._

In front of the window, she thinks it’s only right to spread her legs wide, so he can see how her cunt drips. His sweats are off now and she can spy the significant tent on the front of his boxers, which sends a thrill straight to her stomach. She loves this give and take; relishes the fact that she, a nobody with an otherwise unremarkable life, can elicit this reaction out of a stranger. Fingers slow and deliberate, she slips her panties out of the way and starts stroking herself beneath the fabric, imagining he’s right there. Sighing onto her clit and licking her with his wicked tongue. _What are you thinking about?_ She’d ask. _You, just you_ , he’d say. The bed creaks as she rocks and works herself up in a steady rhythm.

Her pussy’s slick against her fingers. Always is, when they do this. Something about the fact that they could be caught, even though they know that because of the angles their apartments face, they’re really the only ones who can see. 

But Rey doesn’t mind being observed. Likes the indiscretion, in pleasuring herself in front of this window, in front of him. Putting on a show. And yes, perhaps she’s had the sneaking suspicion in the past that this was a particular flavour she’d be into, having searched _camgirl_ and _caught in the act_ and _exposed! pussy punishment_ on PornHub one time or too many before. 

It takes two to tango though, so she isn’t ashamed. He clearly likes this, too, judging from the enthusiastic – and frankly aggressive – way he’s got his cock out of his briefs and pumps the considerable length of it, looking at her like he wants her approval. He motions to the waistband of his underwear like _off?_ but she shakes her head, _keep them on_ , hair falling in her face as she does, but she’s sure he gets the message through whatever cursed pornographic brain-bridge they seem to have going on. 

Then it’s the both of them, working each other up. Her fingers circle her clit and she moans, eyes shut with the heady pleasure of it. She slips one finger into her cunt, then two. He’s large, all over, and she thinks of how thick his fingers would feel inside her, how they’d fill her to the brim. Heat races up her spine as she enjoys just how transgressive this feels, that she - the orphan girl who had to play it right all the time, self-preservation a lifebuoy her entire life - can take control of this and shape it into whatever she wants it to be. That, in her mind, he can be whoever she needs him to be, too. Soft, sometimes. Not so nice, in others. 

When she looks up again, he’s leaning back on the couch, chest rising and falling. Transfixed by the sight of her. She pictures precum beading at the tip of his cock, and how maybe one day she’ll take him with her mouth, and he’d bob her up and down his length, choking her until her throat’s raw. How she’d look up at him through her lashes, and lick. He’d stroke her sore jaw and tell her _good girl_ and paint her face with ribbons of his come. 

As she spirals back down to earth, she looks across at him. And the thought crosses her mind, that maybe she _should_ be embarrassed at how lewd her imagination gets, around him? 

But he doesn’t look away from her. Not at all.  
  


———

  
If Rey had to describe how this started... well. Aren’t most people guilty of parading around in their skivvies, when they think nobody’s looking? So what if she saw her hot neighbour in the glassy apartment opposite, and can anybody _blame_ her for staring if he chose to do a Captain American a.k.a. terrifying number of pullups right in front of those huge windows? Surely it’s not her fault if his preferred mode of interior decoration was so sparse that there wasn’t much else to look at except...him? 

It was a far more interesting view than the senior couple who used to live there, anyway. Nothing against old people, it’s just that Rey knows her response to Hot Neighbour in the opposite block is purely physiological. He’s all lithe lines and rough-hewn strength, the kind of man she’d picture stealing her away in some primordial woodland fantasy. Besides, she’s a twenty-six year old with functioning eyes. If she were the Lookout on the damn Titanic, she’d drive that boat straight into Hot Neighbour’s massive pecs. 

It’s not like he doesn’t encourage it, either. She’s how he looked back at her, eyes fixed for too long as she tended to the potted plants on her windowsill. 

That’s how the pattern started anyway. Innocuously. Two people, just watching.

A onetime peek, an _oh my god I hadn’t meant to_ accidental peek, she can make sense of. 

But the compulsion? The second, third and fourth times they find each other drawn back to their windows in various states of undress? In what one might describe as increasingly compromising positions? _That_ is a little harder to rationalize.

But maybe Rey doesn’t need to.

And maybe she doesn’t want to.  
  


———

  
What would he taste like? Velvet and salt, she thinks. It’d be nice, trying to take all that length in her mouth, to feel him hurting her throat. The stretch of him there, the way she could hold onto his hips if he fucked her face. The push and pull of control while he winds his fingers in her hair. Words falling from his lips - _quiet for me now, my good girl_ as he bobs her up and down. Just how they both would like it.

And he’s a man of exacting habits, she can tell. Or at least it’s easy to make some assumptions about that, because observing specimens is how Rey pays her bills, after all. When she’s not busy putting herself in compromising sexual positions in front of her tiny apartment window, she’s seen the hours Hot Neighbour keeps. What it means when he keeps the door ajar to his study well past midnight; when the takeout containers pile up alongside the unwashed coffee cups. There’s just enough detail she catches about him to be compelling, like the heavy wool of his winter coat, which is probably from somewhere quietly expensive. No — maybe one of those newfangled personal shopper services, because he seems the type who’d outsource something as menial as buying clothing, just because he could. 

Over the winter break, Rey spies what looks suspiciously like repurposed blackout candles, approximated as Hanukkah lights. And she wonders if he also didn’t have somewhere else to be, or a party to go to. She’d thought she was the only one who preferred the solitude of Christmas.

He seems to notice things about her too, though she’s careful to preserve the clingfilm of their mutual anonymity. The closest they’d come to camaraderie might have been when he caught her watching him work out once, and he’d done a sequence of plyometrics so elaborate that she’d clapped at the sheer audacity of it. In return, Rey had shown him how weirdly flexible she was, sticking one leg behind her head, and he almost dropped the cereal spoon he’d been holding. 

Another time, he’d gotten home and just sat on his sofa with his head in his hands, and she’d leaned on the window ledge to show him an impression of a cat eating a lemon, which she’d been watching on her dinged-up Dell. With stupid expressions, silent yowling and all. It seemed to cheer him up momentarily. And that made her feel… good.

The no-strings, no-name arrangement works for her. Her work is thankless and the hours are long but research is meaningful, at least. She loses herself easily in routine and she imagines he does too. 

When she’s not having a window wank and she actually looks out at the city for the view, she imagines what her life could be beyond her carefully contained £560 pcm studio. He caught her doing it, once. She’d been up early, and he’d given her a tentative wave. Blowing on the steam of his coffee as if to say _yeah, me too._

She hoards these tiny details, keeps them tucked away in the back of her mind. But it’s not much more than that. It’s a strange shrine to filth and fantasy that they’ve built, and both of them seem wary to take it any further. As if one wrong move from either side would send the house of cards tumbling down. As if one misstep would reveal the loneliness, deep down, that they both feel.   
  


———

  
On her bed, Rey gives a soft exhale, and starts letting her mind creep to the forbidden folder of thoughts that she otherwise keeps firmly shut. Her underwear’s abandoned, alongside her inhibitions, somewhere on the floor. She angles herself so he can get a good view of the way her back arches, and the curve of her ass when she kneels. 

The heat isn’t on, but the room feels overwarm. And she’s wet, everywhere: sweat beading between her breasts, and her own come wet between her thighs. Rey feels verdant, pliant – and the sheets provide cool relief for her skin. 

The traffic hums outside, ambient noise to her racing thoughts.

And what thoughts they are. Rey’s used to letting her mind wander, cracking open new rooms in the vast maze of her subconscious. Because she’s author and director, and she can imagine whatever she wants. 

In her mind, sometimes she’s on top, grinding on him, and he thrusts under her. A dark look would cross his face when she pins his wrists down. She’d ask him to work harder, and he’d mouth _you’re everything_ , and that makes her come. 

Sometimes in her imagination, she’s the one soft and wanting. He’d trail kisses across her skin from shoulder to collarbone, marking her with gentle bites and teeth. _Mine._

In another, she shoves him onto his knees, and she can only see the dark of his eyes through the slits of a mask. She pictures trailing a riding crop across that plush mouth and yanking at his long locks of hair, telling him he bows only to her. In that one, she pictures the flex of his wrists against rope, how he’s completely at her mercy; cock straining against his thigh as he hisses his release through his teeth and tells her she’s wicked. _That_ image sends her glass dildo slipping out and onto her bed, from how hard she comes thinking of it. And across the way, he’s clearly had no idea what’s happened. But then he, of all things, is laughing with his massive erection still in one hand. And she finds it funny, too.

And Rey knows. She knows, probably from a compulsory Psych 101 module or Kinsey that her subconscious has probably fused her deepest and most intricate desires with this neighbour. He’s become a shadow projection of her id that begs to be scratched, and a small voice inside says: this should be wrong. But then she wonders how long it’s been since she did something with no regard for what should feel proprietary or right. To focus on the controllable environment and exact conditions that can bring her pleasure. So if it means jacking off to a stranger with the blinds open, so be it. 

Sometimes what Rey thinks of, she’s even afraid to say out loud. Thoughts so filthy that she’d blush if she found them on someone else’s incognito tab, but she likes it anyway. In this scenario, she’s surrounded by people who use her body and desecrate it. There’s power in submission, in being nothing but a set of holes where men and women — a blur of different faces accumulated from TV shows and random billboards, converge in a tapestry of filth. People come in her, on her, over her; they see her, ignore her, and use her. And at the end of it all, he’s there. Looming over her come-filled, exhausted body. Pushing all the stray bits back into her stretched holes, and patting her cunt as if to say _keep it in, sweetheart. Just one more, can you do that_ _for me?_ , before he slides his cock in, and fucks her until she falls apart. She moves her fingers faster in her pussy in real life, frantic now. In a rhythm so punishing that she has to squeeze her eyes shut, and then she crests on an orgasm that rips through her like a tidal wave. The wake of it is her, panting out her release, as if she could manifest that he could really be there. 

When she chances a look back across the window, Hot Neighbour has a splatter of come on his chest, white on blush-red. He’s panting, hard. And she wonders at the things that ran through his mind when he came, too. 

Before Rey scrambles to the bathroom to clean up, a thought simmers: _Who are we? What are the lies we tell ourselves? Should we stop?_

But the look on her neighbour’s face halts her in her tracks. 

He looks just as wild-eyed as she feels.  
  


———  
  


It’s the little things, she thinks, that make the ritual worth looking forward to. Over weeks she finds herself experimenting; changing tiny aspects of her persona to see if he might respond. See if he might throw his head back a little harder when he comes, sigh a little longer as he jacks off to the character she’s created.

Rey finds herself clicking around on websites, looking for cheap imitations of Agent Provocateur or Bordelle. Trying on lavender slips and dusky-tangerine scraps of lace, pink nipples displayed for his consumption, like cherries atop a sundae. She walks into the highest-end department store she can find, spritzing perfume on herself in scents like amber and pink pepper, spices that are as rarefied as they are impractical, because she deserves it. Even musters up the courage to not run away from the jewellery section, standing there and admiring the handiwork. As if “princess cuts” and “carat counts” should mean anything to her, other than gibberish.

Her secret agent twilight existence, all in the name of two windows and a fantasy lay. Rey knows where the dream ends, but she falls headlong into it anyway. 

He notices the change in her though. Likes the swagger it puts into her step, the sharpened edge in the aura she’s projecting. Likes it when she curls her toes harder, rubbing herself off, trying a new plug in her asshole that stretches her out so good that she’s gasping, and her thighs drip with her own come afterwards. 

And Rey likes it. How, in her bed, she takes the scraps of femininity that were impractical in her spartan upbringing, and she conjures whatever she desires. She’s never heard him speak but his words fall like water, anyway. _Spread your legs, relax for me. Play with yourself, nicely, until I have to fill you up, and show you what a fucking whore you are._

The space between them feels electric, even if it isn’t real. It’s easy to project fantasy onto a window three feet wide, with a sight line eight feet deep. A personalised peep show just for their mutual enjoyment. Within these confines, she can control what she sees, show her tits and ass on real-time celluloid. He can’t zoom out and see the stack of bills in the corner for her student loan, or the pile of sweaty workout tops falling out of the washing basket. He can’t see that her fridge is covered in mismatched magnets – none of which are hers, but gifts from friends who mean well and bring them back, but it just drives home that she simply can’t afford to go. He doesn’t need to know that she doesn’t have family photos in the house (or family, fullstop). Instead, the time they have together fucking each other with their eyes lays bare a simple truth: that for anywhere between fifteen minutes to one-fifty, neither of them are alone. 

Occasionally, Rey wonders what she would tell Rose about the entire situation. Rey and Hot Neighbour have been doing this for about three months, as the evening light’s turned from muted winter grey to the hazy gold of spring. And still, she and Hot Neighbour are mysteries to each other. “So I caught him shirtless with his underwear on one day and he just didn’t seem that flustered about it,” Rey pictures herself explaining. “It happened kind of naturally — and okay, not totally by accident, and it felt good to be watched, y’know?” Maybe she’d recount it, like one of those tinder survivor war-stories, over drinks. “I _did_ leave the lamp on and shift the whole layout of my room just so he could see me better, but what’s the diff?” she imagines saying to Poe from work. 

Poe would probably give her a thumbs up, knowing him. But that’s besides the point.  
  


———

  
When Rey wakes up the morning of the next Bank Holiday, she’s mustering the nerve to go over there. Because she thinks she catches Hot Neighbour staring back at her sometimes, with a look that says _should we say hi_? 

But the light isn’t on in his apartment. And then it doesn’t turn on for a week. Or two. Then three, four weeks after that.

Rey tries not to be upset. Him leaving wasn’t personal. Whatever was going on between them wasn't anything even close to a relationship. _A stranger._ That’s all he was. And Rey’s spent time in therapy, so she knows it’s not constructive to project her feelings of parental abandonment onto anything as mundane as a window wank. 

Rey knows this on a rational level, but it eats away at her anyway. 

The next few nights are a blur of mopey feelings and Cat Power. She marathons the latest seasons of Stranger Things, Gossip Girl, and even on one desperate occasion, Chenobryl — before she shuts that off, because even she has to draw the line at that level of Very Depressing.

Rey tells Rose about it a month and a half later, over a box of Jerk Chicken from a nearby food truck on their lunch break. Rose gasps, then leans in and says “tell me more”. Rose makes all the right noises at all the right places of the story, and they laugh about it. 

Rey is over it. No, there was nothing to be “over” in the first place. 

One day, Rey resolves, she’ll meet a nice person and she’ll reminisce about this as a wild city-living interlude of her mid-20s. That in just over a dozen chance meetings, she and a dark-haired stranger crossed paths in the most surreal way, and gave each other the best orgasms of their life. At least, Rey thinks the feeling should be mutual – if his visceral reactions have been anything to go by.

So why is she sad?  
  


———

  
As spring warms into summer, Rey barely thinks of him at all. Doesn’t remember the way his neck muscles tense when he nears his peak. Doesn’t remember the high red on his cheeks as he stares at her, eyes dark and glimmering. Doesn’t remember what it’s like to open her curtains, see him, and feel like they have a strange but tentative understanding.

“Four shot Americano for Ben S!” shrieks the barista, directly into her thoughts. 

“Excuse me,” comes an impossibly low voice to her left. 

Warm wool brushes against Rey’s shoulders as the person behind reaches for their cup, carrying with them the scent of sandalwood and fresh-pressed linen. She follows the elegant line of an impossibly large arm up to the shoulder, which turns into a head, which turns into a face. Piercing brown eyes and a beaky nose, curiously plush lips and two brows, arched slightly upwards in surprise. Until the picture comes together, and she realises: it’s Stupidly Large Hot Neighbour Window Fuckbuddy Guy.

Rey almost chokes on her iced tea.

“Oh shit. Um, hi,” she says.

Hot Neighbour freezes.

“You’re...here,” he says.

Rey’s mouth just makes a silent shape where an awkward _hahaha_ would go. But no sound comes out.

In the light of day, and up close, she’s taken aback by how strikingly handsome he is. Not in the magazine-glossy way of the men she’s seen at the salon, or even the rugged grace of one of the Hollywood Chrises. But really, there’s something both utterly controlled about the energy he gives off, even though she knows from visual experience that he’s nothing of the sort. And though she knows he’s built and has seen the latent ferocity with which he jacks himself off, she’s never really had a chance to take in the dusting of moles on his face, or the radiant...warmth that he gives off, in person. 

It’s the kind of energy you can only pick up from being in the same space, knowing that the same doom-inclined pheromones fire between you. 

Probably. 

His hair’s also a little shorter since they last met. It makes his ears stick out, which is more than a little endearing. 

The silence between them stretches out for so long that the barista gives up on shooing them away from the counter, and has yelled PAVA! TRIPLE SHOT MOCHA FOR PAVA twice before either of them moves.

“We’re neighbours.” Rey blurts out. “Of a sort. ...Were?” she adds, cringing inwardly. 

“Yeah. Of course,” he says, vowels flat and she realises – American. Not what she expected, but certainly not unpleasant.

The barista’s glare seems to snap Hot Neighbour out of his reverie. Hot Neighbour gestures stiffly over to the condiments corner, and Rey follows, staring at the Atlantic width of his shoulders as they go over to… continue whatever this conversation is. She doesn’t actually need anything from condiments – having already picked up the requisite sugar packets and napkins on the way in – but he also doesn’t need to know that. 

He’s recognised her, so maybe they can shake hands and start over on a clean slate. Or, just go their separate ways? 

Maybe if Rey wasn’t holding two trays of drinks and not wearing any makeup today because she’s already running late, this would be less embarrassing – but it isn’t. So she just stands there clutching her coffee, as if the watery depths of them would reveal truths that she can’t yet admit to herself. 

But then she glances at him, and his eyes crinkle up in a smile. 

“We _are_ neighbours. You kind of make it hard to forget.” 

_Oh._

God, she has a lot of questions. _Who are you? What do you do for a living? How is it that I know so much about how you look when you’re coming, and nothing about you at all? Does that make me a fucking weirdo? What is this?_

As she’s in the midst of her existential crisis, Rey realises she’s halfway reached to grasp his coat when she freezes and blurts out “Where did you g–“ at the same time that he says “I was out of town, for a project–”

Rey wants to fold her arms protectively inwards, but can’t because her hands are full of over-caffeinated beverages for her overworked team. She stares instead at the worn wood of the café, willing it to swallow her up. As if the effort of burning a hole into the floor with her eyes would lessen the anxiety that’s now humming through her veins. 

He runs a hand through his hair and lets out a chuckle, soft and low. 

“Sorry, you were saying.” Hot Neighbour ( _Ben???_ ) says.

“Right. I didn’t see you around for a bit, so I figured you moved out?” Rey hates how her voice inflects upwards at the end, like she’s asking him a question. Of all the things she is, needy isn’t one of them. It wouldn’t make sense, needing companionship from…fuckfriend anonymous.

“Secondment. I mean, I’m here on one. Then I got reassigned to work on a rescue project up north in Ahch-To for two months, so it didn’t make sense to set a timer for the lights in the apartment. It’d be counter to, uh. The spirit of renewable energy that I’m supposed to espouse. Not that the apartment was mine in the first place. Work.” Ben explains. “Sorry. I’m rambling. I don’t think you need to know the ins and outs of my like, boring rental agreement with my shitty company.”

“I know the feeling. I mean, work being a grind. Not, y’know, the fuckoff nice house.”

“Yeah.” Ben reaches for a napkin, and yanks two out of the container. “Disgusting, right?” 

He smiles, and she notices his teeth are a little crooked. It’s oddly reassuring that this platonic ideal of a bloke has some mortal flaws. 

“Do you need help with that?” he asks, and gestures at the coffee. 

“This? Oh no, I’m fine, thanks. The lab’s just around the corner, won’t be long at all.”

“No, of course. Sorry I assumed you needed a hand.”

The double meaning of it is not lost on them both once he says it. There’s another awkward silence as Rey toes the floor with her Converse.

“I should… go!” Rey says. “I’m actually fifteen – scratch that – eighteen minutes late to this meeting...”

“Shit. Same. Sorry to...keep you.”

They almost walk into each other in their haste, and they both start apologising. But then Rey accidentally bumps his shoulder, and he reaches out a warm hand to steady her – and then she’s looking up through her glasses at his surprised expression, and there’s a horrible swoop in the vicinity of her stomach.

Someone coughs behind them emphatically, and the bubble bursts. She realises she’s standing in a café at the train station during rush hour, and on any other day she’d be the one shooting eye-daggers at whatever disaster-meet-cute is happening between them right now. 

She resolves to get the fuck out of there before she can embarass herself even further.

“Right! Okay! Bye!” Rey chirps, heading for the door. She wants to never relive this humiliation again, and resents that this has happened, in all places, at a Starkiller Café – a place so ubiquitous it might as well be a square of wallpaper copy and pasted across town. And now every time she looks at that planet and coffee cup logo, she won’t ever forget this memory associated with Hot Neighbour – one-time voyeuristic buddy, new all-time low. 

She practically leaves rubber tread marks on the floor, with how fast she’s zooming towards the exit. And she’s made it halfway out the door before he’s _there_ again. 

In one smooth motion, he clears a path for them both without touching her at all, and steps outside.

The city burbles on in the background. Like stones dropped in water, commuters around them shift to make room for the two dolts blocking the steady flow of human traffic.

Staring up at Ben’s face, Rey barely even notices.

“Hey,” he starts. “This will sound pretty weird, but I actually wanted to, uh.” 

_His knuckles are going white on the poor cup,_ she thinks. There’s a terse silence as she tries to figure out what on earth could make this conversation even more excruciating than it already is.

“Doyouwant to maybe goseeamovie sometime?” 

Rey blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”

He hoists his smart-looking messenger bag higher on his shoulder, and tries again. “Uh. I meant. Do you want to see a movie sometime? If you’re free. And want to see something else. Other than the view outside of your apartment.”

Rey raises her eyebrows at that. And he’s clearly embarrassed, so that just prompts him to keep rambling. 

“I didn’t mean outside by looking at me. Or maybe I did, a little. Just thought it’d be nice to hang out. If movies aren’t your thing, there’s a Tutankhamun special exhibition at the Museum, and the runes are exceptionally detailed – fascinating rubric, because it’s nothing like the Seoularian translation...” Ben shakes his head, as if to snap himself out of it. “You know what. Scratch the mummy idea. Not the best. You said you were late, so I’m not going to keep you any–”

Rey looks him dead in the eye. “I’d love to.”

He starts laughing, a low _heh_ sound, before he clocks that she isn’t joking. 

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. I can roll with ancient Egyptian dead stuff. So the Museum? Saturday?”

“That... would be cool.”

She nods. “Cool.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Ben blinks, as if he can’t quite believe his luck.

It’s sweet.

“Here’s my number.” Rey says, and recites it to him, all eleven digits. “Rey, by the way. Johnson. That’s me.”

“Hey, Rey. I’m Ben. Like... the clock tower.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Big Ben.” 

The innuendo’s clear, and then they’re both blushing. She feels like they should shake hands, but they’re both holding cups, so she settles for a friendly elbow bump instead. 

“So.” Rey continues, buzzing with the newness of all this. “Mummies, huh? You into some proper like, nerd stuff?” 

“Yeah, old teenage hangover. Big time nerd. My dad could barely get me out of the study as a kid.” Ben says, as he drop-calls her phone. 

“I believe that. Bet you look good in glasses, too.” 

“Do I? You should come and find out.”

“Maybe I will. Nerd.” 

They both laugh. A little too hard, like they’re both aware these are really bad pickup lines. Although it feels like the entire conversation’s been leading up to this anyway, Rey still wants to open her backpack and hide in there, forever. But then he’s not all that cool, either, because he’s red in the face too. Then he’s shifting his weight and leaning in, like he just wants to soak up part of the current that she’s emitting. And she likes that. 

“I think we could arrange something.” Ben finally says, handing back her mobile. And she reads between the lines: _I think about you. I’d like us to be something. If you would._

His stare then is molten, and wholly inappropriate for early o’clock on a Tuesday. Rey finds herself staring, open-mouthed, back. Bodies speaking to each other in a subcurrent of horny.

A lady pushing a pram shoots them a very unimpressed look. 

Neither of them gives a shit.

Then, a station announcer’s voice bleats out that _the 8.45 service to Onderon is departing_. And they really should go. 

Ben turns around. “Which way are you heading?” 

“Oh! North, past the bagel shop. In the tower to the right.”

“Well, your morning detour’s worth it. Coffee’s way better at Starkiller.”

“I wouldn’t be too hasty about that. Free wifi and Maz-Muffin Mondays are a good bloody deal at Resistance.”

“...I can raise you fiber optic, pour-over, and a great view.” 

_From my place_ , he doesn’t say, but she understands anyway. 

Rey snorts. 

“Awfully forward of you, isn’t it, Ben?”

“Dunno. Seemed to work pretty well in the past.”

She gives him a fake-appalled look, and there it is again: the reedy laugh, just one more piece of the puzzle that is him, slotting into place. 

It’s been a trip, reconciling the idea she had of Hot Neighbour with the dorky, awkward guy she’s just met. Ben.

It feels like a new adventure.

So they peel off into the crowd. Chattering about everything and nothing, all at once. 

They talk for a long time, and many nights more, after that. 

Some nights, they don’t talk at all. Bodies speaking to each other, in a language entirely their own.

Eventually, they decide on a safe-for-work version of their early meetings. (They keep it vague: something about meeting online and “instant attraction” straightaway. Truth is stranger than fiction, and all that.)

And there? Back in the morning hubbub of the least romantic station in the world; even with the pigeon poop, the weird postwar architecture, and the summer humidity that’s frizzing up Rey’s hair?

The dream was good. But reality might be even better, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Some niche references:
> 
> [Onderon](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Onderon)  
> [Seoularians](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pre-Republic_era#Seoularians)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Kudos, concrit, comments always welcome. As are emoji strings, screaming, and anything else you fancy.
> 
> Yell at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/bobaheadshark) too, yuh.


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